Despite an interesting spec sheet, the Essential phone had primarily been restricted to the US market. That changed yesterday. In a tweet put out by the company, it announced availability in newer mar

Despite an interesting spec sheet, the Essential phone had primarily been restricted to the US market. That changed yesterday. In a tweet put out by the company, it announced availability in newer markets such as Canada, France, Japan and the UK. When a customer complained about the lack of availability in Germany, he was pointed out to the online store for the list of countries. At the time of checkout, the Essential store lists the countries it is currently shipping to.

Essential was founded by Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android operating system. He quit Google in October 2014, 18 months after Sundar Pichai took over the Android unit. He started a hardware startup incubator, before announcing Essential with a range of products including a flagship Android smartphone and intelligent home speaker

The first Essential smartphone is called PH-1 and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. It has a 5.71-inch screen with a 2560×1312 QHD display. The display offers up to 500 nits of brightness, and a typical contrast ratio of over 1000:1. The Essential PH-1 comes with an array of sensors including fingerprint reader, proximity and ambient light sensor, environmental pressure sensor, accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope. The display supports 10-finger multitouch with palm and water-error rejection.

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The Essential PH-1 comes with a 13MP dual-RGB and monochrome primary camera. It offers a 13MP monochrome mode as well. the 8MP front camera has an f/2.20 fixed hyperfocal lens in contrast to the f/1.85 lens of the front camera. Both the front and rear cameras support 4k video at 30fps, 1080p at 60fps and 720p at 120fps. The smartphone has a 3040mAh battery and supports fast charging via USB.